Roll up for greatest show on turf
Three top equine artists have joined forces to produce an outstanding exhibition in Dublin
There may be some decent racing at Fairyhouse this week, but the hot ticket in Ireland is an exhibition at the Irish Architectural Archive, in Dublin, where Peter Curling, the best equine action and landscape artist either side of the Irish Sea, and Mark Coreth, the sculptor of Frankel, have joined forces with Dede Gold.
The show, which begins on Friday and runs for a week, came together when Gold – the novice in the field, as it were, although no one captures the character of an animal quite like she does – was writing a book about artist’s block and how to navigate the bumpy ride, when she developed writer’s block. Thus double-blocked, her father, an eminent Waterford doctor, was lunching with Curling and suggested his daughter join them. During the meal Curling suggested a joint exhibition and while they reckoned they could fill the vertical spaces of the Architectural Archive, they needed a sculptor to fill the horizontal.
They rang Coreth. At that moment he was halfway up Mount Kenya, studying elephants, but he immediately wanted in and the threat of an exhibition, even a year away, instantly cured Gold’s block on all fronts.
Curling is a great raconteur. He met his wife Louise, also an artist, when she attended one of his art courses many years ago. Naturally she became “teacher’s pet” and he ended up spending a lot of time helping her with her painting.
One glorious July day he decided to take his students to Kiltinan Stud, now owned by the Lloydwebbers, where there is a very attractive bridge over the River Clashawley.
Louise ended up on the far bank painting it from a different angle and, naturally, Curling wanted to see how his ‘A’ student was getting on so, instead of going the long way round by road, he took off his shoes and socks, rolled his trousers up and started wading across. What better way to impress a potential girlfriend?
The rocks were slippery and somewhat uncomfortable to walk on so he was glad when he saw, suspended a couple of feet above the water, an iron bar, which he reached out and grabbed.
What he did not know, however, was that, as is occasionally the way in Irish agriculture, it was wired up to the electric fence. Water being an excellent conductor, he was lifted bodily out of the river and though he has never been quite the same since, he has been happily with Louise for 27 years.
A few years ago he was asked to paint one of the main packs of hounds in Ireland in full cry and his instructions were to put prominent members of the hunt, who were generous with their support, in the foreground right up with the hounds. On viewing the painting one hunting wag remarked that it must have been a “heel line” as those at the front were usually at the back and there was no sign of those who were usually up with the huntsman.
One of the former jockeys shortlisted for the Jockeys Employment Training Scheme Richard Davis Award, won by Sophia Upton, who has become a starter, was John Pritchard, who now runs Charbel Blinds, his own business, in Ross-on-wye.
When Pritchard, 38, was a jockey he once rode the favourite in a three-horse race at Leicester with the instruction that on no account was he to hit the front until they jumped the last because his mount would pull itself up.
One horse fell at the first, the other slipped up on the bend and Pritchard had to jump a circuit on his own. The horse never looked like stopping, but his biggest problem was the ground staff who, thinking that the race was over, had already started treading in the divots up the home straight.